Darn it:Dell Rebates and Promotions no more?

Yeah I think they are in effect cutting out the Ebayer/Reseller crowd by eliminating the cheapest setups. From what I know, many Ebayers were buying minimal configs and then adding cheap upgrades, like memory, before throwing them on Ebay. I don't think Dell was too pleased with that.

It's probably a good move for Dell since the average (and desired) Dell customer is looking for a middle of the road laptop. Compared to bargain hunters who generally buy just the stripped down bare minimum versions and upgrade on their own.

We'll probably still see some decent specials during EOQ sales. This move puts more power back into Dell's hands as they are dealing with a smaller number of configurations and can just tailor the pricing/promotions on those machines when they need a boost in numbers.

Not that it matters for most of us on B$ as I get the sense we are more of the price mistake / rebate mistake crowd =P.

I'm torn - on the one hand I'm usually all for simpler pricing from retailers (particularly when it means high quality at a fair price with no games), but on the other hand, playing the dell coupons/sales/rebates game is too much fun...

I wouldn't worry about, they did same thing before and we still got deals

Dell has been giving the impression of competitive prices with cheap customer support. This could kill their revenue and cannot last long.